Antiabortion Efforts Move To State Level

Washington Post: Opponents Of Abortion Are Pressing Local Legislators To Increase Restrictions

(Washingtonpost.com)  This story was written by Washington Post Staff Writer Peter Slevin.

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Twelve women sat gloomily in a windowless conference room as Joseph Booker, M.D., recited the instructions required by the state of Mississippi before he can perform an abortion.

"Try to bear with us," Booker began. "This is something we have to do."

Prenatal benefits may be available, prospective fathers are legally liable for support and a list of adoption agencies can be provided, he said, ticking through a list worn into his memory. He offered the women a packet that included a brochure containing color photos of tiny fetuses inside the womb.

No one took the packet. Each woman silently signed the consent form in her lap and filed out. They passed a line of singing and praying antiabortion protesters -- "Do you have time for a 15-second prayer?" "Ma'am, killing your baby isn't going to help" -- to wait the 24 hours mandated by Mississippi legislators.

Booker's clinic is the only place left in Mississippi to obtain a legal abortion. Access is no longer simple at a time when the biggest battles over reproductive rights are taking place not in Washington but in Jackson and Bismarck, Little Rock and Helena. In 2008 alone, state legislatures nationwide considered about 400 measures to restrict abortion.

Recognizing that strong Democratic majorities and the election of Barack Obama as president make it increasingly unlikely that federal laws will be tightened or Roe v. Wade overturned, opponents are pressing legislators to make abortion more difficult to obtain and, they hope, harder to accept.

Rules requiring that a woman be offered the chance to view a sonogram are designed to make her think again. Laws imposing a waiting period after a first visit to a provider have the added effect of raising the obstacles and the costs, especially for poor and working-class women, who are the ones most likely to have an unintended pregnancy.

In states from South Dakota to Texas where the fights are waged, supporters of a woman's right to abortion feel increasingly embattled. Some doctors and clinic personnel feel threatened, particularly since last week's slaying in Kansas of physician George Tiller, the nation's best-known abortion provider. Others say they simply feel beleaguered.

"The states are the battlegrounds and certainly the testing grounds of new kinds of restrictions," said Gretchen Borchelt, senior counsel at the National Women's Law Center, which defends abortion rights. "State legislatures can be more creative in what they're trying to push and see what works."

"We tried every which way, and we were successful in the state way," said Terri Herring, head of Mississippi's Pro-Life America Network. She calls ever-stricter regulations a matter of common sense and creative strategy.
"All-or-nothing means nothing," Herring said. "Incremental means something."

What it means in Mississippi, one of the most restrictive states in the country and a model for antiabortion forces elsewhere, is that a woman seeking an abortion must go twice to the clinic, at least 24 hours apart. A girl younger than 18 requires the consent of both parents or a judge's signature. Public money is available for very few abortions.

Such rules are known as TRAP laws, for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.

"We've got a glut of bills we fight every year," said Felicia Brown-Williams, a Planned Parenthood staffer in Hattiesburg. "We spend the first two months in sheer and utter panic that one of these bills is going to get past us."

Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions in clinics across the country, does not provide them in Mississippi. The reason, said a spokesman, is "the amount of regulations and the cost." Five other clinics have closed, leaving only the Jackson Women's Health Organization, founded by clinic operator Susan Hill.

"We've got rules like crazy," Hill said.

Herring and her colleagues are pleased but not satisfied.

"Mississippi clearly has done all that we can within our current legal culture to end abortion here," Herring said, "and yet we have one remaining abortion clinic."

Booker, 65, remembers when there were six. He worked at another Mississippi clinic from 1989 to 2003, then moved to this one. Opponents have picketed his home in a nearby town, he said, and knocked on his neighbors' doors to denounce him as a "baby killer."

One of the regular clinic protesters, C. Roy McMillan, was a signer of the Defensive Action Statement, which asserts that killing an abortion doctor is justifiable homicide because it saves the lives of the unborn. Scott Roeder, accused of killing Tiller, told friends he agreed.

For 18 months between 1994 and 1996, Booker was under the protection of U.S. marshals, who moved him from place to place for his safety. Years later, he often wears a bulletproof vest.

"After Dr. Tiller died, I started thinking, 'What's the use?' They'll just shoot me in the head," Booker said. Although deputy marshals met with clinic staff members in Jackson last week to consider providing protection, he said he intends to continue living at home and following his routine.
"I'm older now," Booker said. "I'm not going to let them paralyze my life for how I think. That's what they try to do, bully everybody out for doing abortions."

Booker, who performs about 60 abortions a week, said he is careful to follow state law. But, citing medical research, he refuses to comply with the legislative mandate to tell women that abortion increases the risks of breast cancer and infertility. During one counseling session last week, he called them "two things definitely not associated with having an abortion."
He then explained how to complete the consent forms.

"Signature, date and time. Full name. No initials," Booker said. "Today's date is six four oh nine. Our time's going to be 10:25 a.m."

The time is important. Booker, determined to give his critics no cause to shut the clinic, wants no exceptions and no mistakes.

"If they come 20 minutes early," Booker said, "they won't be seen before the 24 hours is up."

For all of the talking he does, Booker and counselor Betty Thompson said they see few women express interest in what he is saying. They also say the requirement to come twice to the clinic is an economic and personal hardship, especially on the state's poorest residents, some of whom live as many as three hours away.

A woman named Temeka said her mind was made up before she took a day off from work to visit the clinic. Six weeks pregnant with twins, she decided that giving birth and raising the children would be too much -- on top of her marriage, her mothering of a 1-year-old, her full-time job at a sandwich shop and her studies at a junior college.

"I have doubts, but I know what I've got to accomplish," said Temeka, 26, who asked that only her first name be used. "I already asked God for forgiveness."

Counseling completed, Temeka walked the line of the beseeching protesters, headed for her car and an 80-minute drive home. She wished she could have an abortion without the waiting period, in a private clinic.

"You've got to face the protesters and all the things they're telling you," she said just before leaving the clinic to walk to her car. "I'd just rather get it done and go away and put it behind me."

As she left, protesters on the other side of a fence scrambled to walk alongside her, barely three feet away. "Prayer? Prayer?" one woman called. Another asked, "Can we do anything for you, sweetie?"

Temeka walked straight ahead, past the boy and girl whose signs said in bold black letters, "WE CAN HELP." Past a man who began to pray in a loud voice, "Let these women who think they don't have a choice know that they have a choice. Their babies do not have to be destroyed."

Herring has worked on more than a dozen pieces of legislation with the Chicago-based Americans United for Life, which takes credit for "helping state after state become more pro-life every year." Her next goal is a law requiring clinic staff members to report the identities of the sexual partners of pregnant underage girls. She is also working on a school curriculum.

"We have helped build a legal fence that helps protect women," Herring said. "The greater goal, even in legislation, is to influence the culture. This is a major culture war that isn't going away."

[randomlybanned]

This is how abortion will be stopped - through the individual states. Which is one of many reasons Obama is seeking to overthrow the rights of states at every possible juncture.

[Dgunner]

AMERICA where we baby our killers and kill our babies, love it or leave it !

[nextgenman09]

It never ceases to amaze me just how FAKE those claiming to be Republican really are....they can't get the federal government to interfere in people's personal lives so they go back - yet again - to try to get state governments to control people's lives.

Fake Republicans.

[stn_sage]

The majority of the people in this nation don't like abortion, but they also want it to remain a legal option for women, so they can make their own choices about THEIR bodies.

Posted by gravyboat3000 at 10:23 AM : Jun 8, 2009
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Agreed! But it's also a shame that so many people who claim to be practicing Christians---
know so little about acting in a Christian-like way---that they form gauntlets outside abortion
clinics that patients are forced to endure as part of this process!

I would guess---that the vast majority of these women---feel absolutely terrible about having
to do what they are doing for VERY GOOD reasons---making them feel worse, is neither helping the situation OR being a true Christian!

[DefendLiberty]

Q: What is Christianity?

Posted by at 12:57 PM : Jun 8, 2009
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Ask some of our FOUNDING FATHERS:

Thomas Jefferson. Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
"One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!" --John Adams, 2nd US President

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
-- James Madison

?Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity? - Thomas Paine

[dahizzle]

Q: What is Christianity?

A: It is the belief that a two-thousand-year-old Jewish zombie can enable you to live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat an apple off a magical tree in a wonderland.

Anyone here ever seen 'The Gods Must Be Crazy'?

[the74blaster]

The Defensive Action Statement seems like a terrorist threat to me. Looks like Homeland Security was right when they predicted a rise in Extreme Right Wing Violence.

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Posted by johndevinejr at 9:33 AM : Jun 8, 2009,

Maybe these people should consider that millions of unemployed people means they cannot afford to feed a familiy, so the number of abortions could rise. Afterall if a couple is unemployed they only have several options to decrease the boredom.

Based on this they should start picketing the employers who have shipped the high paying jobs offshore and maybe that will help stimulate the economy. They could even follow the high rollers home and picket at their private residencies, just like they do with doctors.

The new slogun should be save a job and save a another baby!

[dahizzle]

>>>Fascism and the like are already here dressed as democrats.<<<

You have to be joking. Do you know what the definition of fascism is? The Bush admin was the epitome. You people are brainwashed...take your phony reli

[saturn05]

Didn't are ancestors come to America to leave free of religious zealots. This is a land of freedom, but we let the religious dictate how we should conduct ourselves and protect our civil liberties based on their skewed idea of life. They have no right to dictate public policy. Control your churches and your family if you can, but leave the rest of the population alone. You have no right to harrass, and shove your personal beliefs down our throats. You talk about the liberal agenda, the homosexual agenda, well yours in the worst of all. You want to take away our protections under the Constitution and create your own society based on myth and hearsay. Religious or not, you have no right to infringe on anyone's right to choose abortion, same-sex marriage and all other personal matters. I think god would want you to live in harmony, but instead these kooky religious groups create hatred and diversity due to their creepy methods.

[cottonn]

I think the point here is being missed. You condem religion but you really shouldn't. Fascism and the like are already here dressed as democrats. Do you realize that there is a middle ground being missed? One young woman down the street had SEVEN abortions because she kept forgetting her pills. One of the 7 was born alive and they killed it!!! My little granddaughter was born earlier than her aborted baby and my g'daughter is alive and healthy and a wonder. How is it that a woman's rights don't start with the initial act that gets them pregnant? If she gives that up, she shoud NOT be allowed to kill another human being. That's not rocket science, that's just good sense. I don't understand the left's penchant for killing babies and fighting the death penalty. Makes no sense at all.

[DefendLiberty]

The CHRISTIAN TALIBAN is alive and well in America. Like their ISLAMIC counterparts, there is no limit to the VIOLENCE these EXTREMISTS will use to further their DREAM of a CHRISTIAN MULLAH RUN USA. The THEOCRATIC RIGHT is a DANGER TO the LIBERTY of ALL AMERICANS. They must be stopped with EVERY AND ANY means available. To allow the CHRISTIAN EXTREMISTS to rule this country is the END OF a FREE AMERICA.

The greatest danger to freedom is the ascendancy of religions that want to make America their own version of a RELIGIOUS STATE. The CHRISTIAN TALIBAN and their political enablers in the Right wing press and the GOP are no better than the extremist MULLAHS that run IRAN, or the Muslim TALIBAN that force their extremist orthodoxy on the populations of Afghanistan or Pakistan. Like the Islamic extremists, the Christian Taliban must be fought by every means possible. In many cases, they will not acquiesce to law, but will understand only force. It is a PATRIOTIC duty to defend America against these zealots who would turn this country upside down and destroy it to satisfy their own lust for "RELIGIOUS PURITY". F'em.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." - Sinclair Lewis

[DoubleHappiness88]

Your s.ex life and reproductive options are none of religion's or government's business.

The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and engrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.-- Thomas Jefferson

Religion*s obsession with controlling sex and reproductive choices is a sick fetish.
Civil law is assuming the duties of THE RELIGIOUS POLICE.
We are becoming no better than Saudi Arabia.

[gravyboat3000]

The Defensive Action Statement seems like a terrorist threat to me. Looks like Homeland Security was right when they predicted a rise in Extreme Right Wing Violence.

.
Posted by johndevinejr

Yes, in much the same way the uni-bomber accurately spoke for any one concerned about the environment...pull your head out of your azz before you engage the thought process.
Posted by itsjustathought

How many Physicians have been slain by anti-abortion terrorists?

How many clinics have been bombed?

The terrorist who murdered Dr. Tiller claims that there will be more killings. He may be a nut job and a liar, but what if he's correct?

The Dr. in this story has to look over his shoulder constantly, and his neighbors are harrased on a regular basis. All for providing a service to women that is LEGAL!

The majority of the people in this nation don't like abortion, but they also want it to remain a legal option for women, so they can make their own choices about THEIR bodies.

Maybe it's you who should pull your head out?

[jclark7613]

I thought this was a free country. Why does anyone have a rights to tell a women what to do with her body. I'm a Democrat and I personally would not have a abortion myself but it's not my business what the next person does. My best friend was told her baby would not live because the test showed the baby had no kindney. They told her that the baby would die shortly after giving birth. Not for religious reason she carried the baby full term and the baby died a hour later. She basically became depressed and distant and divorced less than a year later.

[DoubleHappiness88]

The religious zealot is not pro-life or anti-abortion
The religious zealot is for the control of women.

America, it is time to stand up to fanatical religionists and put a stop to their jihad.
What religion is speaks so loudly; we cannot hear what religion claims to be.

Stand up to religious arrogance, call them on their ignorance and stupidity. Drive religion back into churches and temples and out of government and the lives of thinking people.
The prurient interest of religious nuts in the s.ex lives and reproductive choices of others is a perversion and a mental illness.

"The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation." --Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!" --John Adams, 2nd US President

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
-- James Madison, 4th Us President

The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and engrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.-- Thomas Jefferson

"The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy." --George Washington

[johndevinejr]

One of the regular clinic protesters, C. Roy McMillan, was a signer of the Defensive Action Statement, which asserts that killing an abortion doctor is justifiable homicide because it saves the lives of the unborn. Scott Roeder, accused of killing Tiller, told friends he agreed.


The Defensive Action Statement seems like a terrorist threat to me. Looks like Homeland Security was right when they predicted a rise in Extreme Right Wing Violence.

.